Creative Commons is pleased to announce the launch of a new division focused on education: ccLearn.

ccLearn is dedicated to realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources (OER). Our mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.

• With legal barriers, we advocate for licensing of educational materials under interoperable terms, such as those provided by Creative Commons licenses, that allow unhampered modification, remixing, and redistribution. We also educate teachers, learners, and policy makers about copyright and fair-use issues pertaining to education.
• With technical barriers, we promote interoperability standards and tools to facilitate remixing and reuse.
• With social barriers, we encourage teachers and learners to re-use educational materials available on the Web, and to build on each other’s contributions.

ccLearn will be in transition over the remainder of the summer, 2007, reaching full operation this Fall. ccLearn is generously supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and is working closely with members of the Foundation’s Open Educational Resources Program. This is an international project, and we will be working with open educational sites and resources from around the world.